Books

Sacha Baron Cohen, of Borat and Bruno fame, will next star in Paramount's The Dictator, hitting theaters worldwide on May 11, 2012. Borat (Twentieth Century Fox) and Bruno (Universal) director Larry Charles is re-teaming with Cohen. The Dictator is based on Saddam Hussein best-selling novel, Zabibah...

With so many movies going into Sundance without distribution, many of them docs, getting them seen by the right people is tough. Cindy Meehl's Buck has the advantage of being the behind-the-scenes true story of the man behind Nick Evan's novel and the film made from it by Sundance's own Robert Redfo...

Eva Gabrielsson, partner of Stieg Larsson, the late author of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Millennium series, tells The Guardian that 200 pages of a fourth book were written before he died of a heart attack at age 50, walking up a flight of stairs. Gabrielsson's upcoming memoir, Millennium, Stieg...

While Paul Haggis is the subject of an upcoming New Yorker profile by Lawrence Wright, the writer-director (Crash) insists that he is not collaborating on Wright's book on the Church of Scientology in any way. His interview for the magazine article may be used in the book, however. Haggis, who was a...

- Rebecca Hall is a total scene stealer. Think Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Please Give, and The Town. She's a rising star; here's a first look at her first leading role in The Awakening, from Brit director Nick Murphy and screenwriter Stephen Volk. Dominic West (The Wire) and Mike Leigh regular Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake) co-star. Set in 1921, a bereaved woman (Hall) deploys rational arguments to debunk supernatural myths. A countryside boarding school asks her to come to ease panic caused by a boy's death (and rumors of a ghost). Her beliefs are challenged when she faces her own ghostly encounter. The Studio Canal and BBC films...

Indie filmmaker Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven) talked to television critics about his first foray into television on HBO's Mildred Pierce Friday at the press tour in Pasadena. TOH contributor Amy Dawes reports: The revisionist spirit that shaped classic 1970s American films like Chinatown and The God...

Jessica Chastain, Tom Hardy, Rebecca Hall and Michael Fassbender are four hot-as-flapjacks actors who have given Hollywood reason to expect great things. They are, so far, actors known better for their roles than their celebrity, and while 2010 was a year packed with noteworthy performances--includi...

We've been tracking the rival Snow White projects since September, and the latest is that Charlize Theron and Julia Roberts are both being wooed to play (beautiful) Evil Queens. Theron is in negotiations for Universal's Snow White and the Huntsman, with director Rupert Sanders (Michael Fassbender is...